“End Game” [ft. Future & Ed Sheeran]

Remember when Max Martin threw a dubstep drop on “I Knew You Were Trouble”? “Trouble, trouble, trouble,” Taylor Swift theatrically emphasized over the couple-years-too-late wobbles. But there was something endearing about the whole thing: you had to give it to Swift and Martin for taking it there, even if “there” wasn’t an especially cool place to take it. Five years later, Martin is still Swift’s go-to guy for unignorable power-pop anthems; he and his affiliates have co-written and produced more than half of her new album reputation, including “End Game,” a song that capably absorbs and regurgitates the hybridized sounds of 2017 rap and R&B, with the shuffling drums you might hear on a sad Drake song and half-rapped cadences much looser than Swift’s norm. “Big reputation, big reputation, you and me we got big reputations,” Swift chants, finally answering the question that’s been at the tip of our awaiting tongues: what kind of reputation does Ms. Swift have? (Spoiler alert: In addition to being big, “End Game” continues, Swift’s reputation is also bad.)

“End Game” is also reputation’s only track with features, and they are doozies, to be sure: Codeine cowboy Future shows up with an uncharacteristically choppy, double-time flow, the kind you bust out when you’re probably going to top the Billboard charts and are on your best behavior. And then there is Ed Sheeran, who, perhaps seizing the opportunity of finally not being the squarest person in the room, flexes his #bars with a Cliff’s Notes summary of his love life, complete with a seemingly arbitrary reference to the 4th of July. Both Future and Sheeran pass their homework assignment of making sure to work the word “reputation” into their verses with flying colors—I mean, have you heard how big these reputations are?

Swift and Martin, without question, know what they’re going for here: a song that harnesses the palette of the 2017 rap and R&B charts without losing Swift’s pop essence, proof that Swift “gets it.” But there’s something deeply uninspired in tasking Martin with assembling a bland composite, rather than going straight to the source—who wouldn’t be at least a little curious as to what a Taylor Swift and Metro Boomin track would sound like? The decisions here feel measured to the point of lifelessness; preoccupied by the end game, risks become liabilities.